1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to generating and executing voice enabled web applications within a hypertext markup language (HTML) and hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) framework.
2. Description of Related Art
The evolution of the public switched telephone network has resulted in a variety of voice applications and services that can be provided to individual subscribers and business subscribers. Such services include voice messaging systems that enable landline or wireless subscribers to record, playback, and forward voice mail messages. However, the ability to provide enhanced services to subscribers of the public switched telephone network is directly affected by the limitations of the public switched telephone network. In particular, the public switched telephone network operates according to a protocol that is specifically designed for the transport of voice signals; hence any modifications necessary to provide enhanced services can only be done by switch vendors that have sufficient know-how of the existing public switched telephone network infrastructure.
An open standards-based Internet protocol (IP) network, such as the World Wide Web, the Internet, or a corporate intranet, provides client-server type application services for clients by enabling the clients to request application services from remote servers using standardized protocols, for example hypertext transport protocol (HTTP). The web server application environment can include web server software, such as Apache, implemented on a computer system attached to the IP network. Web-based applications are composed of HTML pages, logic, and database functions. In addition, the web server may provide logging and monitoring capabilities.
In contrast to the public switched telephone network, the open standards-based IP network has enabled the proliferation of web based applications written by web application developers using ever increasing web development tools. Hence, the ever increasing popularity of web applications and web development tools provides substantial resources for application developers to develop robust web applications in a relatively short time and in an economical manner. However, one important distinction between telephony-based applications and web-based applications is that telephony-based applications are state aware, whereas web-based applications are stateless.
In particular, telephony applications are state aware to ensure that prescribed operations between the telephony application servers and the user telephony devices occur in a prescribed sequence. For example, operations such as call processing operations, voicemail operations, call forwarding, etc., require that specific actions occur in a specific sequence to enable the multiple components of the public switched telephone network to complete the prescribed operations.
The web-based applications running in the IP network, however, are state-less and transient in nature, and do not maintain application state because application state requires an interactive communication between the browser and back-end database servers accessed by the browsers via a HTTP-based web server. However, an HTTP server provides asynchronous execution of HTML applications, where the web applications in response to reception of a specific request in the form of a URL from a client, instantiate a program configured for execution of the specific request, send an HTML web page back to the client, and terminate the program instance that executed the specific request. Storage of application state information in the form of a xe2x80x9ccookiexe2x80x9d is not practical because some users prefer not to enable cookies on their browser, and because the passing of a large amount of state information as would normally be required for voice-type applications between the browser and the web application would substantially reduce the bandwidth available for the client.
Commonly-assigned, application Ser. No. 09/480,485, filed Jan. 11, 2000, entitled Application Server Configured for Dynamically Generating Web Pages for Voice Enabled Web Applications, the disclosure of which is incorporated in its entirety herein by reference, discloses an application server that executes a voice-enabled web application by runtime execution of extensible markup language (XML) documents that define the voice-enabled web application to be executed. The application server includes a runtime environment that establishes an efficient, high-speed connection to a web server. The application server, in response to receiving a user request from a user, accesses a selected XML page that defines at least a part of the voice application to be executed for the user. The XML page may describe any one of a user interface such as dynamic generation of a menu of options or a prompt for a password, an application logic operation, or a function capability such as generating a function call to an external resource. The application server then parses the XML page, and executes the operation described by the XML page, for example dynamically generating an HTML page having voice application control content, or fetching another XML page to continue application processing. In addition, the application server may access an XML page that stores application state information, enabling the application server to be state-aware relative to the user interaction. Hence, the XML page, which can be written using a conventional editor or word processor, defines the application to be executed by the application server within the runtime environment, enabling voice enabled web applications to be generated and executed without the necessity of programming language environments.
Hence, web programmers can write voice-enabled web applications, using the teachings of the above-incorporated application Ser. No. 09/480,485, by writing XML pages that specify respective voice application operations to be performed. The XML documents have a distinct feature of having tags that allow a web browser (or other software) to identify information as being a specific kind or type of information. Hence, the XML documents define the application to be executed by the application server within the runtime environment, enabling voice enabled web applications to be generated and executed without the necessity of programming language environments.
A number of menu-driven telephone applications currently exist that are large and complex. From the user perspective, it is sometimes easy to get lost among the various menus. For example, in response to a prompt, the user might have pressed xe2x80x9c1xe2x80x9d at the main menu which results in taking the user to a sub-menu. The user might then press xe2x80x9c6xe2x80x9d from the sub-menu only to realize that this was not the menu selection the user wanted to select. If it is not clear how to return to the previous menu, or if so many menus have been traversed that it is difficult to retrace the steps, the user will typically hang-up and start over. One solution to this frustrating problem is to have a xe2x80x9c0xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9c*0xe2x80x9d type menu option to contact a customer care representative. However, due to existing architectural restraints, the customer care representative has only limited control over the call, allowing things such as transferring the caller to various phone numbers with specific entry-points in the application. The customer care representative does not have control over direct menu position or the application state of the caller.
There is a need for an arrangement that enables a customer care representative to have control over direct menu position or the application state of a caller in a scalable, open standards based system on an open standards based network such as an Internet Protocol (IP) network.
These and other needs are attained by the present invention by a method, in an application server, which permits control by a second party over a voice application of a first party. The method includes receiving an HTTP request for execution of a voice application session for the first party. A state of the voice application session of the first party is prevented from being changed by the first party. Based on the HTTP request, an HTML page having a session identifier is generated for a browser of a second party for controlling the application state of the first party.
Another aspect of the present invention provides an application server having an application runtime environment configured for receiving a first HTTP request having a session identifier that specifies a server-side data record configured for storing an application state for a voice application session of a first party. The application runtime environment is configured to modify the session identifier to change the application state of the voice application session of the first party based on a second HTTP request having an input posted by a second party. The application runtime environment is also configured to update a brownie of the first party to include the modified session identifier.
Hence a second party (e.g., customer care representative) can directly modify a given field in the state information of a first party (e.g., caller) or may xe2x80x9cdrivexe2x80x9d the application state as if he or she was the caller, so as to place the caller at the appropriate location within the application.
Additional advantages and novel features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned by practice of the invention. The advantages of the present invention may be realized and attained by means of instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.